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Friday, 13 April 2012

Best ever Chocolate Cupcakes

These cup cakes are the quite simply the best chocolate ones I have ever made. They are light and soft even after a few days.
To decorate them I used my nutella butter cream then some chocolate eggs.
normally when I make this I would use vanilla paste but unfortunately I didn't have any so I used a vanilla pod.
I also used stork ready to use butter

What you do:
in a sauce pan heat gently up the milk and vanilla pod, do not let it boil. Put to one side to cool completely.
Pre heat your oven to 180 o'C and line your tin with cupcake cases.
In a double boiler melt the chocolate, once melted remove from heat and set to one side to cool.

Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and creamy.

In a separate bowl or cup beat the egg yolks

then slowly mix this into the butter and sugar. Make sure it is fully incorporated.

Add in the melted cooled chocolate to the butter mix. Again make sure it is fully incorporated.

In a separate bowl sift the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda.

Sieve the milk into a jug. Split the vanilla pod in half and scrape out the seeds and add them back to the milk.

Add the milk and flour to the chocolate mix, make sure you alternate between the two, beating well, until it is all fully combined.

In a clean bowl whisk the eggs whites until the form soft to stiff peaks.

Carefully fold this into the chocolate mix. make sure that you can not see any egg whites other wise once they are baked you will end up with white bits. make sure you do not beat the mix at this stage as you will loose the air.

carefully spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases. Be careful as the mix will be a liquid consistency.
Place the tray into the oven on the middle shelf and bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
Leave in the tin to cool for 10 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

In a large bowl cream the butter and icing sugar. (sorry forgot to take photo's at this point)
Mix in the milk and nutella until smooth, thick and creamy. I do mine so that it will hold its shape. If you find it is to thin just add a little more icing sugar or if it is to thick add a little more milk. Do this until you have a consistency that you like. You are now ready to decorate.

I used my grass nozzle, it is a big nozzle with lots of holes in it, (not sure what number it is as mine do not have that on them) and made a nest then I put in the eggs.